This invention relates in general to the production of electrolytic hydrogen from a suitable electrolyte: sea water, tap water sodium chloride solution or brine, particularly as a prime object to a technique that evolves hydrogen 99.98% pure at both electrodes of an electrolysis cell in which the arrangement and function of such electrodes are integrant parts of the invention.
In the electrolysis of brine or sea water, chlorine is produced at the anode, hydrogen together with sodium hydroxides at the cathode, i.e. "Dow cell".
Increasingly large amounts of hydrogen are used in industrial processes and actually as propeller fuel for space vehicles and in recent years is being recognized as the ideal one for automotive and other engines as well as utility fuel, inasmuch as its combustion with oxygen produces pure steam instead of pollutants, and with air minimal controllable emission of nitrogen oxides. While the proposed use of hydrogen for the above purposes is subject of many technical papers, actually, besides the NASA program there is not widespread commercial use of the concept, experimental work in projects to power automobiles fueled by hydrogen were and are actually performed in this Country, Europe and Japan, while every one demonstrated the excellence of the gas as energy carrier and its superior performance, in all cases hydrogen was and is supplied by the following methods:
1--PRESSURIZED PA1 2--LIQUEFIED PA1 3--STORED IN METALLIC HYDRIDES
The major factor that actually precludes the use of the gas hydrogen as automobile fuel or for that matter as utility fuel is that beside the problems of storage an delivery, the cost of production with the known techniques in amounts equivalent in terms of BTU's of energy, exceeds greatly the cost of conventional fossil fuels, even considering the fact that weight by weight, hydrogen is three times more powerful than gasoline.
The invention's disclosure will lead to the evidence that the cost of hydrogen will be appreciably reduced inasmuch as it is evolved at both electrodes, cathode and anode of the generator. The invention represents the solution of storage and delivery problems since the gas is produced in situ and on demand as described further, also represents a radical departure from the conventional electrolysis of sea water or brine and its results.
The electrolysis cell described in drawing (1) consists of: 1--CATHODE, the stainless steel lining of the plastic vessel and its permanently connected twin stainless steel plates between the anode banks. 2--ANODE BANKS, consisting of an arrangement of magnesium plates (key element of the system), permeable separators and aluminum plates. 4--The sea water as the electrolyte.
By its nature the cell as described above, is also a galvanic arrangement of elements that makes of it a source of electricity with a nominal 1.5 volts as difference of potential in open circuit at its plus and minus terminals and a negligible chemical reaction between magnesium and the electrolyte.
Referring to a single cell; when a variable load closes the circuit, an electric current flows trough the system, current that is inversely related to the load resistance and directly to the surface of the electrodes. The electric energy causes the magnesium anode to produce chlorine, the chemical reaction of the magnesium with the electrolyte produces hydrogen that is liberated at this electrode (anode). Hydrogen and sodium hydroxides are produced by electrolysis at the stainless steel cathode, the hydrogen is liberated at this electrode (cathode); the aluminum component of the anode slowly at first, reacts also chemically with the sodium hydroxides produced, and the resultant hydrogen increases the total output. It is not well understood, other than by speculative theory (time element?), the action of the permeable separator between the metals magnesium and aluminum, however and being incontrovertible the fact that it causes to be produced an excess of hydrogen above the predictable quantities produced by electrochemical reactions, this fact is disclosed and incorporated as principal and very important part of the invention.
The system produces analytically tested, hydrogen of 99.98 percent purity being evolved at the two electrodes with no traces detected of chlorine. Also as byproducts the cell produces magnesium and aluminum hydroxides that when recuperated from the system, represent the stock material industrially obtained from sea water and bauxite as first step in the industrial production of the mentioned elements, magnesium and aluminum.